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Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

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Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#191

Post by ZeroGravitas »

EamonnMR wrote: post #173
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #32

This just doesn't ring true to me, at all. Is the Youtube algorithm directing people to make vaguely fascist feeling, "bring back the good old days", 'kids today', 'civilization is doomed' content aimed at young males? Or is that just a natural cycle that repeats throughout history? The biggest film in history was "Birth of a Nation" until it was replaced by "Gone with the Wind", "Star Wars" may have been a rebellion…

> hereditary rulers that are related to each other starting wars Star Wars (New Hope) is nothing of the sort. The universe just got progressively smaller as they retconned every character into being related to every other character.

I meant that as general dig at "princesses" in film and history, not the specific weird Star Wars geneaology.

Star Wars is basically old War Movies, Flash Gordon serials and Errol Flynn swashbuckling movies spliced together, as such it draws on the long history of storytelling that, in turn reflecting their own 'good old days', often revolves around the beautiful and genetically superior children of heriditary dictators who murdererd their way into power and how they deserve to be the rightful ruler and basically owner of the populace.

This is not a good lesson and is exactly the kind of thing Terry Pratchett satirizes with Lance Constable Carrot Ironfoundersson in Discworld, or George RR Martin in Game of Thrones.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#192

Post by Cerium »

hedora wrote: post #186
BoppreH wrote: post #24

Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…

I've noticed an even newer effect: Making scenes almost all black. It might be a software problem with the HBO Max app's gamma and brightness settings, but it's absolutely the case that, during the day with thin curtains drawn, I had to put a thick blanket over my head and an iPad in order to see the highlights in some of the darker scenes in one of their recent original productions (probably Raised by Wolves Season…

In the past I have adjusted the black level on my video player to make movies like this watchable. It won't look good, but you can make the few shades they used visibly different.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#193

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

hedora wrote: post #186
BoppreH wrote: post #24

Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…

I've noticed an even newer effect: Making scenes almost all black. It might be a software problem with the HBO Max app's gamma and brightness settings, but it's absolutely the case that, during the day with thin curtains drawn, I had to put a thick blanket over my head and an iPad in order to see the highlights in some of the darker scenes in one of their recent original productions (probably Raised by Wolves Season…

This sounds a lot like "dynamic contrast", i.e. varying the display's light source brightness with the scene brightness. I can't speak to whether or how the iPad implements it, but it's a common behavior of LCD screens. It's configurable on some devices.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#194

Post by vlunkr »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #90
BoppreH wrote: post #24

Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…

A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.

It seems pretty short-sighted to blame it on actors. They are a low-level cog in the machine that are trained to exactly what they are told. It's the job of the director to get the performance out of them that will look good on screen. Can't the sound teams talk to them?

Seems much more likely that, as other posters have said, movies are edited to play on the big screen at high volume.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#196

Post by xvilka »

viraptor wrote: post #52
k__ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. I feared the Hollywoodization of the game industry. But it never happened in the mindless extend of movies and music. Indie games are still going strong.

I think all media you mentioned have similar effects and all have both Hollywood and indie areas. I mean, some sports games are definitely hollywoodized with "let's just swap some colours, change 2021 to 2022 and charge another $70". On the other hand Bill Wurtz still releases new tunes on YouTube and Ben Levin continues doing... Ben stuff. In movies you can still get quality indie productions like Joel Haver's full…

There are some jewels in the category of the short movies. For example, some films, even mini-series from the DUST channel on YouTube.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#197

Post by civilized »

BoppreH wrote: post #24

Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…

This was perfectly satirized a decade ago https://www.mrlovenstein.com/comic/87

...and still hasn't been fixed.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#199

Post by zthrowaway »

watwut wrote: post #177
zthrowaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what fascist means? Or are we just going to use that word for everything that we find unappealing now? Would love for you to define it, and explain how it applies to American nostalgia for older classic movies that are a foundation of our pop culture.

It is nostalgia for movie era that never really was. By cherry picking old movies and seeing in them what you want to see. Which is something different then trying to analyse actual past production as it actually was. It is seeing decadence in contrast to past heavenly era, because you want it to be like that.

Okay, you can have a problem with people glorifying the old days. But that still has nothing to do with fascism. My above question has yet to be answered.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#200

Post by rhino369 »

loufe wrote: post #185
cvuls wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you're using a stereo setup then, dialogue is usually mixed into the centre channel, downmixing a 5.1 or 7.1 stream to stereo will produce those results. even worse is if you don't downmix to stereo, and all you are hearing is front left and right, which is often just the reverb effect channels for dialogue

Christopher Nolan's Tenet was a prime example of horrible stereo translation. I could hardly understand the dialog. I've never changed volume so much during a movie. IIRC he refused to produce any audio mixes aside from those meant for the most premium 7.1 stream theatres. What a shame.

That mix was garbage even in 7.1. I had to add 10db to the center channel.
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